Pokemon Black/White 2 Feels Like a Nintendo 3DS Game

Why the 3DS is the best way to play the latest entry in the series.

I've been ambivalent about the Nintendo 3DS from the beginning. When it arrived last year, I wasn't a fan of the 3D effect, the battery life, or even the screen. It felt extraordinarily dated to me.

That changed back in August when I traded in my 3DS for a new 3DS XL during PAX. As usual, the big, beautiful screen makes all the difference; all the sudden, 3DS games actually feel like a marked upgrade over their DS counterparts. But I've also been surprised by the degree to which it's refreshed Nintendo DS games for me, most especially the excellent Pokemon Black 2 and White 2.

Playing Pokemon on Nintendo's newest platforms isn't exactly a new thing for me. Back in 2003, I regularly played Pokemon Crystal on my Game Boy Advance. When the Nintendo DS Lite arrived in 2006, I used it to play Pokemon Emerald. The sharper screens and more attractive ergonomic design of the newer systems came at a price though. If I wanted to trade or transfer my Pokemon, I had to go right back to the older systems.

To Game Freak's credit though, Pokemon Black and White 2 is not only fully-functional when played on the Nintendo 3DS, the experience is arguably superior to that of playing on a DS or DS Lite. Putting aside a few jaggies here and there, it looks great on the 3DS XL's enormous screen, and the online functionality is near perfect. I can't imagine playing it on anything else.

Among the elements that have impressed about the Nintendo 3DS Pokemon experience is how well it interacts with the classic DS. Where it was impossible to link up the Game Boy and GBA, thus stranding millions of second generation Pokemon on outdated systems, trading between the DS and the 3DS is a piece of cake. The Memory Link and PokeLab feature, both of which interact with DS Download Play, are likewise fully-functional. The 3DS doesn't even balk at the fact that I'm trading with a Japanese copy of Pokemon Black.

In an added touch, the 3DS offers access to the Pokemon Dream Radar app, which can be downloaded for $2.99. Yeah, the Dream Radar should really be free for what it offers (or it should be free in the first month of Black/White 2's release), but zapping clouds and capturing Pokemon in a fashion befitting the Ghostbusters is enjoyable enough. The main reason to get it is for the Pokemon that it yields, most notably the new forms of Thundurus, Landorus, and Tornadus. For some it will be a ripoff, most notably because the game only spits out one of each, but that's how Game Freak has done business since the beginning of time. No reason to expect that they will be changing that any time soon.

The Dream Radar is interesting because it provides a reasonably glimpse into Game Freak's plans for the 3DS going forward. At a guess, we'll be seeing more paid apps in the future. They could be apps that facilitate the online play, StreetPass functionality, or offer mini-games. Maybe Nintendo will even be nice enough offer an app along the lines of the incredibly useful Pokemon Box for the GameCube. Regardless, the Dream Radar is the future.

What's really nice about the Dream Radar is that it makes Black/White 2 feel like an actual 3DS game. It's reasonably attractive, ties in nicely with the game itself, and offers some incentive to make the jump to the new console. And as I mentioned, Black/White 2 actually looks suprisingly good on the 3DS screen. It doesn't show well in screenshots -- few portable games do -- but it's by no means ugly.

The one thing that's just a shade annoying about playing on the 3DS? If the wi-fi is turned off when playing Black/White 2, and you want to do play online or something, you have to exit the game to turn it back on. That's pretty much it.

I don't want to say that Pokemon Black/White 2 has single-handedly swayed my opinion of the 3DS, but it's certainly helped. For me at least, the gap between this generation and the last has finally been bridged.